Brasilia (Brazil). On 4 October 2023, the national office of the Salesian Network Brazil (RSB), in Brasilia (DF), welcomed Sister Ena Veralís Bolaños, General Councilor for Administration of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, on an animation visit to the Provinces of Brazil.
Present to welcome her were the Executive Directors of the RSB, Sister Silvia Aparecida da Silva, FMA, and Don Nivaldo Luiz Pessinatti, SDB; the Executive Coordinator of the RSB, Maria Dantas; and the representative of the Board of Directors of the Edebê Publishing House, Sister Divina Neves, FMA, who presented the history of RSB as well as projects, ongoing activities in Brazil, and global partnerships.
“Personally, this visit gives me a great lesson and also a confirmation of some criteria that we are adopting in the Institute. Secondly, I thank you, because we have talked a lot in this time about networking, about involvement of the synod work, but sometimes we use beautiful words and we do not see them materialize or we do not find ways to build a real network. I believe that your working model, like the mission you lead, is a real network. (…) The different steps that were presented to me show clearly a good discernment, the methods, the responses, the needs that exist. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for this mission,” commented Sister Ena regarding the path of the RSB.
The Councilor was introduced to all the teams of the National Office of the Salesian Network in Brazil and to the teams of the Edebê Publishing House present. On the importance to have one’s own Publishing House, he stated, “I think that conceiving the Salesian Network and Edebê within a Charism is very important. […] Normally, most of our schools in the world, or our works, purchase materials from other publishing houses that have different policies from ours, or a different charism, and we form an entire generation of young people with the thoughts of another publishing house. I believe that what validates this network is the fact that we are forming a different way of thinking. With the materials you produce, be clear that what is being formed is a way of thinking, with a specific Charism”.
Still on the subject of the network, Sister Ena expressed her satisfaction with the Salesian Social Action in Brazil. “This struck me a lot, because I didn’t yet know the Social Action that you carry out (…). I had already heard about it in various works of the Social Action of the Salesian Network in Brazil and now that it has been presented, I believe that this too has a strong meaning, because we are not only working on the mission for the Schools. The mission has a whole area of social action which is charismatically very strong, together with the communication area, because communication is transversal in everything”.
At the end of her intervention, Sister Ena recommended herself as follows, “We must give strength to formation. I believe that the point is formation, because we cannot undertake a dialogue except through it”.
“Having Sister Ena with us and being able to feel this look of attention and support from the FMA Institute in our reality of online action, strengthens us and encourages us to continue to join forces in the realization of the educational mission. Furthermore, she brings us closer to the charismatic guidelines of an Administration that focuses on the care of life”, stated the RSB Executive Director, Sister Silvia Aparecida da Silva.
“It was a lesson in administrative and charismatic clarity. It managed to grasp the main points of our Network, highlighting the great intuition that the FMA and SDB Provinces had at the beginning of the collaboration, managing to meet and put into practice what still today is done, particularly in networking. The Salesian Network in Brazil has managed to make concrete and operational this true manifesto of networking that many talk about and which not everyone achieves immediately. […] I liked it when she said, ‘You were born with a way of networking and, over time, you evolved, you got to know each other better and today you have a very different networking model, enriched by coordination and areas’ […]. This is where our esteem lies for a person who has a global responsibility: the Sector for the Administration of the Congregation deals with encouraging, enhancing, and promoting life, not just money”, concluded the RSB Executive Director, Fr. Nivaldo Luiz Pessinatti.
Fonte e Foto: Rede Salesiana Brasil
